Call to Action
The City of Oakland is facing many crucial decisions at this moment as the next 2 year proposed budget (2015-2017) is being reviewed by the city council and in community budget hearing forums. Each council member will have an opportunity to identify and set budget priorities for their district and will vote to adopt a final budget by June 30th. In this moment of rapid and massive displacement, workforce development challenges, severe lack of affordable housing, and unnamed arts and culture priorities, the people of Oakland have an opportunity to speak up to ensure that budget priorities are rooted in cultural equity and create a vision where intersectional arts, culture and community initiatives are core priorities for neighborhood investment and development.

Vision
We aim to build a base of supporters that help shape and develop neighborhood based priorities for creative investment and activities; to encourage the City to re-establish the Oakland Arts Commission to assist in the creation of a neighborhood centered cultural plan. The adoption of a cultural plan that leverages the people and community assets already being cultivated on the grassroots level, and to encourage council members to develop policy/budget recommendations that support arts and cultural preservation, affordability, and healthy neighborhoods.

Structure
We invite anyone that wants to be involved in (1) action planning and advocacy, (2) communicating/rallying people, (3) policy writing/develop/research, (4) stakeholder cultivation, and (5) meeting/gathering facilitation, and probably more tasks to come. Lead organizers are Anyka Barber, Betti Ono Gallery and Katherin Canton, Emerging Arts Professionals/SFBA. This is a volunteer effort. We aim to make this organizing effort a sustainable one.

Core Guiding Principles (Adopted from the Artivist_PAC):
Oakland’s economic growth and well-being depend upon the health of the Arts community
Cultural Equity is inextricably tied to racial and economic justice and community health
City Wide – beyond Uptown, must resource East and West Oakland too (e.g. the flatlands)
Community Oriented – both the processes of cultural development and funding recipients
Local First – must prioritize Oakland residents from historically underrepresented communities in both funding allocations and Arts programming

By joining the coalition we ask members to:
Appoint an organizational or community representative to attend meetings and events
Support the project by lending your org/group name and logo
Promote and share the meeting/event/action alerts with it’s members, mailing list, and social media followers
Stay engaged in the local conversations around cultural equity and arts policy
Commit to bringing out a strong contingent to actions
Share possible resources or examples of projects that would be good case studies for the work

Our Ask today:
Please appoint at least one representative of your community to attend this Community Priorities Meeting AND share & invite your members.